There were some remarkable admissions in a piece by the distinguished Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in the immediate wake of the British teaching union NATFHE’s vote this week to offer members moral backing if they boycott Israeli universities. British academics opposed to Israeli colleagues’ complicity in the lengthy and continuing occupation of the Palestinians are now advised to boycott them and their institutions.

Israel isn’t under any threat from boycott movement, but fighting a phony BDS war is too tempting for many to pass up.

Ramzy BAROUD: "The Fight Ahead: 13 Questions about the Origins, Objectives and War on BDS" (The Palestine Chronicle, Oct 4, 2017): click here!

The BDS Movement was the outcome of several events that shaped the Palestinian national struggle and international solidarity with the Palestinian people following the Second Uprising (Intifada) in 2000.

"After decades of Palestinian dispossession and Israeli military occupation and apartheid, the United Nations has taken its first concrete, practical step to secure accountability for ongoing Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights,” said Omar Barghouti.

Rima NAJJAR: "The UN should take a lead from the global BDS movement" (MEMo, Sept 22, 2017): click here!

Among ongoing outrageous actions and in defiance of international law, Israel’s Habayit Hayehudi party has just approved a plan for annexing the remaining occupied Palestinian territory “while either facilitating the exit of Palestinian residents or allowing them to remain but without voting rights.”

Members of Congress are currently considering a bill that threatens to silence the growing support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom and human rights, known as B.D.S.

European professors and academic institutions urged to end cooperation with the EU-funded project over involvement of Israeli institutions known for illegal detention practices, routine torture, and violence against Palestinians.

As of July 2017, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli racism and apartheid is 12 years old. This means that over the last dozen years a worldwide grassroots movement has grown up – a movement of civil society – that has organised active opposition to Zionist racism and Israeli oppression.

The California Democratic Party has approved a resolution calling on the US government to promote “a just peace based on full equality and security for Israeli Jews and Palestinians alike, human rights and international law.”

Prefatory Note: Below is an Open Letter prepared under the direction of Vida Samiian of State University of California at Fresno on behalf of California scholars defending against any effort to abridge academic freedom anywhere in the world, but particularly in California and the United States (Richard Falk).

The pro-Palestinian provocateur is under attack after a newspaper alleged that she 'tricked' her way into Israel last month. She says she will be 'heartbroken' if the authorities ban her from ever returning.

The leadership of CAIC among other South African churches and Christian leaders, including Bishop Ngcana, recently returned from a solidarity trip to Palestine. On his return Bishop Ngcana explained that: “The church leadership found Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights to be appalling. Israel has mastered well from the South African apartheid regime and actually surpassed its architect, Hendrik Verword, through its design and application!”

We keep track of the growing awareness inside the U.S. mainstream press of the far-right character of Israeli political culture; and this weekend the LA Times published a long editorial slamming the Israeli government for “trying to wall out its critics.”

Kim JENSEN: "The Battle for Palestine on US Campuses: a review of ‘We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel’s Critics’" (Mondoweiss, July 6, 2017): click here!

There are many ways to try to silence people whose ideas you don’t like. You can bully, blackmail, violate, isolate, punish, and smear them until they shut up, back down, and/or lose the platform upon which they were speaking.

On Tuesday, the Spanish parliament unanimously passed a motion recognizing the right to advocate for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as protected under the right to freedom of expression and association. This bill was introduced by the progressive parliamentary coalition “Unidos Podemos-En Comú Podem-En Marea.”

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip participated in “Israeli Apartheid Week,” in late March as a worldwide call for the complete boycott of companies profiting from Israel’s occupation, along with calls that Israel is an apartheid state that is based on racial discrimination against the Palestinian people.

Student-led BDS campaigns resulted in two major Chilean universities canceling events co-sponsored by the Israeli embassy and featuring Joe Uziel, a director of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). On Monday, Alberto Hurtado University's Anthropology Department announced the cancellation of the event, and yesterday the University of Chile's Social Sciences Faculty did the same.

Amnesty International: "States must ban Israeli settlement products to help end half a century of violations" (AI, June 7, 2017): click here!

The international community must ban the import of all goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements and put an end to the multimillion dollar profits that have fuelled mass human rights violations against Palestinians, said Amnesty International today.

"Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Anthropologists Reflect on the Struggle for Boycott and a Half-Century of Israeli Occupation"(Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions, June 5, 2017): click here!

June 2017 marks fifty years since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a watershed event that consolidated and extended the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. After a half century of deepening colonization and apartheid, the “two state solution” that has long been proposed as a way to resolve the conflict appears more elusive than ever.

A senior Israeli official serving in the United States didn’t even attempt to evade the truth. It’s true, he told me – we have been greatly exaggerating the issue of the boycott. It’s a marginal, insignificant phenomenon.

"No, it is not unfair to criticise Israel"(MEMo, May 13, 2017): click here!

As Palestinians mark a number of key, painful anniversaries in 2017, Israel is busy with not ending the occupation, but entrenching it and crying wolf claiming to be the victim in the decades-old conflict.

Today, the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), representing close to one million workers, endorsed a full boycott of Israel to achieve Palestinian rights under international law. LO is the largest and most influential umbrella organization of labor unions in Norway.

Throughout the month of May, members of the Modern Language Association, the largest professional society of humanities scholars in the United States, will be voting on a resolution which—in contrast to other scholarly associations—seeks to ban the association from endorsing of the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Key Israel lobby groups have conceded that they have failed to counter the Palestine solidarity movement, despite vastly increasing their spending. The admission is contained in a secret report that The Electronic Intifada has obtained.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel is winning, a top anti-BDS strategist has conceded. At the “Ambassadors Against BDS” conference in New York last month, former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein said that “in 2016 our community probably invested 20 times … more resources in dealing with this problem compared to what we invested in 2010.”

Barcelona city council passed a historic declaration on Wednesday upholding the right to boycott Israel over its violations of Palestinian rights. The motion condemns Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, calls for the immediate end to the decade-long Gaza blockade and ensures that the city’s public procurement policies exclude companies that profit from Israel’s human rights abuses.

Today, in light of the Barcelona City Council’s vote to condemn Israel’s occupation, call to end complicity in Israel’s violations of international law, and affirmation of the legitimacy of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian human rights, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) released the following statement:

How can we distinguish between the very real and harmful phenomenon of antisemitism, and false accusations of antisemitism used to defend Israeli state policies ? Jewish Voice for Peace, a grassroots organization working for justice and equality in Palestine and Israel, has put together a collection of essays on this question.

A new UN report offers explicit backing for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign to end Israeli apartheid and support a just peace. The landmark report’s endorsement of boycotts, economic sanctions and other grassroots initiatives comes at a moment when Israel is desperately attempting to criminalize and suppress international support for Palestinian rights.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has just forwarded its questions to the French government, following the appeal filed by the 11 activists who were convicted after their public call to boycott products imported from Israel.

Today, Israel denied entry to Anuar Majluf, a Chilean citizen, human rights defender, lawyer and Executive Director of the Palestinian Federation of Chile. Majluf is Christian, and was traveling with a delegation of other Chilean citizens to spend Easter in the Holy Land.

Last week, one of the most prominent legal journals in the world, The European Journal of International Law, published an article on its website affirming that the European Union and its member states have a legal obligation to stop all trade with illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

Israel and its surrogates suffered a significant defeat last week, when a federal court in Washington, DC, threw out a key claim in a lawsuit against the American Studies Association for its resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

sraeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed cohorts of Israel loyalists in the United States by video link last week at the annual conference of Aipac, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Human rights defender Omar Barghouti is urging people around the world to increase boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns as the best way to show support for him – and for the Palestinian people – as he faces escalating repression by the Israeli government.

More than a decade ago, the Israeli government launched a new strategy that it dubbed “Brand Israel”. This began in 2006 as an effort to improve Israel’s negative image overseas, “by downplaying religion and avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians.”

Creede NEWTON: "Angela Davis: 'This is the South Africa moment for the Palestinian people'" (Middle East Eye, March 28, 2017): click here!

The struggle for Palestinian rights is reaching a turning point similar to that seen in South Africa when the global boycott movement helped bring down apartheid, renowned academic and activist Angela Davis told US students this week.

Allison KAPLAN SOMMER: "The Jewish Voice at the Heart of the Boycott Israel Movement" (Haaretz, March 28, 2017): click here!

Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson isn't your typical BDS activist: she spent three years in Israel, is married to an Israeli and has relatives in the West Bank. Despite many critics in the organized Jewish community, she says JVP is thriving in the Trump era and doesn't need the establishment's stamp of approval.

J"Don’t Punish Protest – Open Letter to the University of Manchester" (BDSUOM, March 27, 2017): click here!

Dear Dame Nancy and Dr Redmond, Two of our students from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement are facing disciplinary hearings this week (29th March) due to carrying out a banner drop on the Samuel Alexander building which read ‘Stop Arming Israel’.

Colin SHINDLER: "These Academics Fight BDS on Campus Every Day. Will They Be Banned From Israel?" (Haaretz, March 19, 2017): click here!

Israel's law banning entry to settlement boycotters is a form of intellectual harassment and may mark a watershed moment in wider Israel-Diaspora relations.

Roger WATERS: "Why I must speak out on Israel, Palestine and BDS " (Salon, March 17, 2017): click here!

Seventy years ago, my father – 2nd Lt. Eric Fletcher Waters – died in Italy fighting the Nazis. He was a committed pacifist, and a conscientious objector at the start of the war, but as Hitler’s crimes spread across Europe, he swapped the ambulance he had driven through the London blitz for a tin hat and a commission in the Royal Fusiliers and he joined the fight against fascism.

PACBI spokesperson Mariam Ibrahim called the Celtic fans’ example a “model” of how soccer can play a central role in not only forcing the expulsion of Israel from international soccer, but in raising awareness more generally about Palestine.

The landmark report’s endorsement of boycotts, economic sanctions and other grassroots initiatives comes at a moment when Israel is desperately attempting to criminalize and suppress international support for Palestinian rights.

Israeli Apartheid Week took place on more than 30 university campuses across the UK last week despite a massive government backed campaign of repression. The week saw some events cancelled, with unprecedented and bizarre restrictions imposed on organizers.

Israel’s passing of a law that bars entry to foreigners involved in boycotting Israel (including its settlements) was condemned by a wide spectrum of Jewish organizations, including J Street, Americans for Peace Now, the American Jewish Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others.

On March 1, 2017, the Student Council of the University of Turin approved by wide majority (76%) a motion supporting the academic boycott of Israel, calling for revocation of the agreements between the university and the Israel Institute of Technology – Technion in Haifa.

In the last ten years, an old scholarly paradigm that was used for the historical analysis of European settler movements in various parts of the worlds, and in different periods, resurfaced in the USA and Australia as part of the new wish to understand the modern histories of these countries.

A conference on Israeli “exceptionalism” will go ahead in Ireland this spring, organizers insisted on Wednesday. Supporters of the event – organized by University College Cork academics – include Ken Loach, director of the award-winning movie I, Daniel Blake, and Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop.

An event supposed to take place at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland involving Israeli Ambassador Ze’ev Boker was cancelled following pro-Palestinian protests and demonstrations; the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is 'shocked and saddened.'

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network participated on Monday, 23 January in an event at the European Parliament organized by the GUE/NGL(European United Left/Nordic Green Left) group in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and against attempts to criminalize BDS movements, organizations and organizers.

Palestinian human rights defender Salah Khawaja is currently being held in prison on the basis of a so-called “secret file” and threatened with administrative detention, reported the Stop the Wall Campaign. Khawaja, 46, is a member of the Secretariat of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee and a leader of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. He was seized from his Ramallah home on 26 October 2016 in a pre-dawn armed military raid by Israeli occupation forces and subject to heavy, torturous interrogation, ill-treatment, beatings and denial of access to a lawyer.

The news is in: on Saturday, a resolution to endorse the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions was rejected by the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association, the largest and most traditional humanities association in the United States.

BDS campaigners in France are welcoming their government's decision not to spend more than $100 million on Israeli drones. This is the second major defeat for Israel's Elbit Systems, which last year lost a major bid it had been tipped to win to sell France its Watchkeeper drone.

The international movement to boycott Israel business and sanction those who do business with the state has been given a huge shot in the arm by the passing on Friday night of an unprecedented United Nations Security Council resolution.

Palestinians welcome statement as “a major blow to Israel’s repressive legal war” on the BDS movement: Renowned legal scholars and lawyers from 15 European countries consider BDS as “a lawful exercise of freedom of expression”. Palestinian BDS human rights defenders welcome the statement as a “defining moment” in asserting their right to boycott Israel to realize Palestinian rights

“The EU stands firm in protecting freedom of expression and freedom of association in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is applicable on EU member states’ territory, including with regard to BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] actions carried out on this territory,” Federica Mogherini told the European Parliament in answer to a written question in late September.

In July 2014, at the height of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Spain’s RESCOP launched a national campaign targeting local cultural institutions, businesses and associations, asking that they declare themselves “free of Israeli apartheid.” That effort has since grown, in both size and kind. Today, there are more than 50 participating cities and towns across the country.

Earlier this month, The New York Review of Books published a call for “a targeted boycott of all goods and services from all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and any investments that promote the occupation, until such time as a peace settlement is negotiated between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.”

A statement recently published in The New York Review of Books calls for “an Economic Boycott and Political Nonrecognition of the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories” [Letters, October 13]. We welcome the statement’s shattering of the taboo against boycotting Israeli entities that are complicit in — at least selective — violations of Palestinian human rights.

The following is a press release from California Scholars for Academic Freedom (CS4AF), a group of over 200 scholars at twenty California institutions of higher learning, urging a renewed and strong support by university administrators for academic freedom and the right to free speech and dissent in light of the alarming recent history of assaults on academic freedom, including a list of over 20 such assaults:

UN high commissioner on human rights calls on UN deputy secretary-general to ‘set an example’ and to demand the boycott of Israeli and international businesses with ties in east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and in the West Bank.

Monday 26th September 2016, about 20 activists protested against the collaboration of the University of Leuven with Israel. During the official opening of the academic year at KU Leuven protesters lay on the street, just before the procession of professors in gowns was coming.

"For an Economic Boycott and Political Nonrecognition of the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories". Todd Gitlin, Peter Beinart, Peter Brooks, Michael Walzer, and Edward Witten, et al. (The New York Review of Books, Sept 20, 2016): click here!

We, the undersigned, oppose an economic, political, or cultural boycott of Israel itself as defined by its June 4, 1967, borders. We believe that this so-called Green Line, as defined by the 1949 armistice, should be the starting point for negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian parties on future boundaries between two states.

The 2016-2017 academic year has just started in occupied Palestine, and with it come the hopes and dreams of young students, but also the daily challenges of walking to school past Israeli soldiers, or driving through checkpoints in the West Bank, or assigning a culturally and politically relevant curriculum in annexed East Jerusalem, where Israel is trying to impose an Israeli curriculum in Palestinian schools.

Cadiz, provincial capital in the autonomous community of Andalusia in the Spanish state, has become the latest municipality to pass a motion supporting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and declaring itself an Israeli "Apartheid Free Zone".

"Fred Moten’s Statement in Support of a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions" (MLA-Members for Justice in Palestine, Sept 7, 2016): click here!

I’ve been learning something recently as the rhetorical energy surrounding the idea and actuality of an academic and cultural boycott of Israel—which is the least those of us who are still concerned not only with human life in Palestine but also, and more generally, with unsettled, non-colonial life can do—has increased and intensified.

Boycott is, as many proudly recall, an Irish invention. The first boycott targeted a notorious land agent, the eponymous Captain Charles Boycott, for attempting to evict tenants. Inspired by the Land League, local people refused to serve or work for him, responding to his threat to their means of life by severing social and economic ties with him.

Israel’s biggest military companies last year rang alarm bells over a decline in international contracts, citing smaller budgets, more competition, and less desire for Israeli-made products as among the reasons. Is this an indicator that Israel’s arms industry might not be as invincible as it seems?

The LAW TRAIN project, aimed at unifying police interrogation methodologies, has generated controversy in Portugal because of vocal opposition to Israel’s participation in the EU’s Horizon 2020 research framework and the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Israeli entities taking part.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network international coordinator Charlotte Kates was denied entry to Palestine at the King Hussein Bridge crossing from Jordan to occupied Palestine on Monday, 15 August, as she attempted to join a delegation of European parliamentarians and lawyers in support of Bilal Kayed and the Palestinian prisoners.

Sheldon Adelson, the Nevada casino mogul and conservative mega-donor, is leading a campaign against pro-Palestine groups on US college campuses and has funded posters that accuse individual students of supporting terrorism and promoting “Jew Hatred”.

Egypt and Lebanon have received extensive media coverage during the Rio Olympics, not because of their athletes’ sporting achievements (of which there is little to celebrate), but because of the political controversy surrounding their actions.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become the latest US denomination to take economic action against the Israeli occupation. At its triennial assembly last week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the four million-member church, one of the largest in the US, voted on two separate resolutions targeting Israel’s occupation and human rights abuses, passing each by a landslide.

Notwithstanding the nomenclature, the M4BL platform is a prime example of the intersectionality among the multifarious struggles for justice. Such solidarity and witness underline the principles of the human rights-based approach to freedom and equality. The affirmed solidarity of the Black Lives movement with the Palestinian experience imbues the Palestinian struggle for human and national rights with renewed energy.

In this writing, I want to portray the psychological aspects and perceptions relating to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement concerning Israel. I will not always refer to BDS as a singular movement, but also to the general idea of “boycott”.

The calls to boycott Israel aren’t intended to deny its legitimacy, but to encourage it to end its policy of occupation in the territories. Precisely because Israel is considered a legitimate state and a longstanding, proper member of the family of nations, the entire world demands that it follow this family’s accepted rules.

Strategic Affairs Ministry aims to change the way Israel is perceived in the international arena, director general Sima Vaknin tells lawmakers; says victory will be achieved when Israel won't be equated with apartheid.

The wide-ranging new platform of a coalition growing out of the Black Lives Matter movement includes harsh criticism of Israel, which it describes as an “apartheid state” that, it claims, perpetrates “genocide” against the Palestinian people, endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

The Israeli government has reacted angrily to plans by the Gulf state of Qatar to support a group backed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn which wants to impose a global trade and cultural boycott on the Jewish state.

In 2016, a bill targeting organizations that choose to divest from Israel, AB 2844, was proposed in the California state legislature. In 2015, New York Governor Mario Cuomo also issued an executive order creating a blacklist of organizations that support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This legal backlash, or “lawfare,” against the BDS movement is a direct response to the threat it represents to a powerful status quo.

Not long ago, a Jewish former neighbor of mine wrote to me to ask whether, as a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, I support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. I replied that I’ve supported boycotts of companies that promote Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land for years now; otherwise, I explained, I would be complicit in a serious offense against humanity and international law.

"Irish public figures’ statement in support of Israel boycott" (The Palestinian Information Center, July 27): click here!

In an open letter published recently in the Irish Times and Irish Independent, thirteen of Ireland’s best-known musicians, writers, artists and sports stars have called on the Irish government to join them in supporting the growing worldwide boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Palestinian writer and activist Nada Elia responds to claims than economic boycott of Israel is bound to fail: BDS will never bankrupt Israel, and that is not necessary for it to achieve its goals: showing that the emperor has no clothes, and empowering justice-minded people everywhere to disengage from a hyper-militarized, violent rogue state, until it stops violating international law and the human rights of an oppressed people.

Israeli think-tank fellow Yossi Klein Halevi, writing recently in the Los Angeles Times would have American readers believe that the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement is “immoral” and threatens the peace of "the region's only intact society", while simultaneously boasting it can't touch Israel's health and global economic integration.

I don't support a boycott of Israeli academia. But Ben-Gurion University's decision not to honor Breaking the Silence, an NGO whose crime is to remind people of the occupation, leaves me no choice: To decline the honorary doctorate it has offered me.

Inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the US Civil Rights movement, BDS today is widely recognized as having a strategic impact in challenging international support for Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people.

Under the title “No to the Horizon2020 Law Train project - No to cooperation with Israel’s repressive system!”, on Thursday 24, a large coalition of Portuguese forces has held the official launch of a campaign aimed at ending the participation of the Portuguese ministry of Justice and the police in a joint, EU funded project with Israeli police forces.

The vice-president of the International Network of Genocide Scholars has pulled out of the group’s conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, following appeals by Palestine solidarity campaigners. BDS South Africa, an organization supporting the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israel, has announced that University of Cape Town professor Mohamed Adhikari had informed it that he has withdrawn his presentation from the conference. The British genocide scholar Martin Shaw has also announced he is pulling out of the conference, which begins Sunday.

Rebecca VILKOMERSON: "I’m Jewish, and I want people to boycott Israel" (The Washington Post, June 24, 2016): click here!

Last month, a group of students at the University of California, Irvine gathered to protest a screening of the film Beneath the Helmet, a documentary about the lives of recruits in the Israeli Defense Forces. Upset about the screening of a film they viewed as propaganda for a foreign military, the students were also protesting the presence of several IDF representatives who were holding a panel discussion at the screening.

Last week Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professional associate of mine, became the fourth winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), joining Alice Walker, Richard Ford, and Junot Diaz.

The human rights and Palestine solidarity organisation BDS South Africa welcomes the withdrawal by the Centre of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) from an upcoming conference in Israel. The prominent South African human rights organization, the CSVR, was scheduled to participate at the upcoming International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) conference at Israel’s Hebrew University between the 26th and 29th of June 2016.

Scholar and writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner and associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, has endorsed BDS and the cultural and academic boycott of Israel in support of Palestinian rights.

Israel’s attacks on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and other human rights defenders living under occupation, such as Al Haq staff, have dominated the headlines in recent weeks, including the direct threats made by leading Israeli officials against BDS activists and in particular against the movement’s co-founder Omar Barghouti.

In an open letter published in today’s Irish Times and Irish Independent, thirteen of Ireland’s best-known musicians, writers, artists and sports stars have called on the Irish government to join them in supporting the growing worldwide boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

When Michael Karayanni was appointed law school dean, Isaac Herzog hailed it as 'break[ing] another glass ceiling for Israel’s Arabs'. But one academic's success can't erase Israel's institutionalized racism directed at its Arab citizens.

There is much to discuss and some of the issues are difficult ones, including questions of framing. Al-Shabaka Executive Director Nadia Hijab discussed some of these issues in a wide-ranging conversation with Omar Barghouti.

It’s crucial to think about why academic boycott exists in the first place. It is not a silly diversion from the serious work of teaching, service, and research. It affirms the ideals of equal access underlying that work. The immediate goal of academic boycott is to offer fellowship to our colleagues in Palestine. Its ultimate goal is to help provide much-needed relief from the miserable conditions under which they often labor.

Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions vowed to continue its campaign after a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions that was under consideration by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) narrowly missed adoption by a razor-thin margin of 39 votes, 2,423-2,384 (50.4%-49.6%).

To the esteemed members of the band BaBa ZuLa. We are most distressed to hear that you will be participating in the Sun Beat Festival in the Golan Heights, which is under Israeli occupation, between 23 and 25 June 2016.

"UK academic union of over 100,000 members urges freedom for Imad Barghouthi, defense of Palestinians under attack" (Samidoun, June 5, 2016): click here!

The UK’s University and College Union (UCU), representing over 100,000 members as the largest trade union and professional association for academics, lecturers, trainers, researchers and academic-related staff working in further and higher education throughout the UK, affirmed its support for the rights of Palestinian academics under attack in an emergency motion passed at its Congress on 1-3 June.

“When I was in school,” recalled Republican pollster and right-wing propaganda consultant Frank Luntz, “there was no opposition to Israel whatsoever.” But today, he warned, “schools across the country have tremendous challenges” because young people are dramatically more liberal, increasingly hostile toward Israel and more sympathetic to Palestinians.

The leading international campaign advocating anti-Israel economic boycotts says its website came under cyber-attacks for several times this year, suggesting the Tel Aviv regime was involved in the attacks.

In another blow to the Israeli campaign to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism, the Irish government has affirmed that the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement represents a “legitimate” means of protest “intended to pressure Israel into ending the occupation.”

In response to parliamentary questions from Green Left MP Rik Grashoff, Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders said that “statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

In 1989, the queer theory professor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a founder of the field, presented a paper, “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,” at the annual gathering of the Modern Language Association (MLA).

The Foreign Ministry has no overall strategy, lacks funds and is failing to achieve its goals in the battle against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, a damning state comptroller’s report charged on Tuesday.

We, the 28 undersigned organizations, call upon you - in your capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide - to withdraw your participation from the annual conference of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS), scheduled to take place June 26-29 2016, at the Hebrew University in occupied East Jerusalem.

Members of the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison vote overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution to divest from the State of Israel and corporations that profit from the illegal occupation of Palestine.

"354 European human rights organisations, church groups, trade unions and political parties call on the EU to support their right to boycott" (European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, May 18, 2016): click here! List of endorsers (pdf): click here!

"Chomsky: Hillary Clinton Fears BDS Because It Counters Decades of US Support for Israeli Aggression" (Democracy Now, May 16, 2016): click here!

We speak with world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky about where the Democratic presidential candidates stand on the issue of Israel and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

Despite having lived in Israel for 22 years with no criminal record of any kind, Omar Barghouti was this week denied the right to travel outside the country. As one of the pioneers of the increasingly powerful movement to impose boycotts, sanctions and divestment measures (BDS) on Israel, Barghouti, an articulate, English-speaking activist, has frequently traveled around the world advocating his position.

Individuals, groups, associations, local councils and public institutions participating in BDS campaigns in Palestine and elsewhere are human rights defenders. They are entitled to protection and support by governments and national authorities in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

On February 22 of this year, the House of Commons passed a motion condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement initiated in 2005 by Palestinian civil society. The BDS movement is a non-violent, global campaign which encourages organizations, activists and citizens to apply economic pressure on Israel “until Palestinian rights are recognised in full compliance with international law.”

The Alliance of Baptists is examining its investments to determine if the church has bought shares in firms profiting from the Israeli occupation.
The probe follows a decision taken at the church’s annual meeting in St. Louis last month to support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Gideon LEVY: "Boycott Is the Only Way to Stop the Israeli Occupation" (Haaretz, May 1, 2016): click here!

Aluf Benn's proposal for Israel's left to establish a base of domestic support for its positions is hopeless considering the brainwashing, ignorance, blindness, the good life, lack of opposition and increasing extremism of our society.

Aluf BEN: "The Boycott of Israel Is No Miracle Drug" (Haaretz, April 28, 2016): click here!

A single state would bury both the Palestinian national movement and the Zionist vision. People who view the boycott as 'saving Israel from itself' might find themselves living in a Masada.

We interviewed Norman Finkelstein, the noted scholar of the Israel/Palestine conflict, in Brooklyn on April 8 and followed up with email exchanges. The following text contains both oral and written responses to our questions.

During a three day (April 12-14) vote, by secret ballot, the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO/UAW2322) at University of Massachusetts in Amherst voted overwhelmingly (95%) in favor of adopting a resolution to stand in solidarity with Palestinian civil society and join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

At its national congress on 16 April, the liberal party D66 – short for Democrats 66 – called on its lawmakers to promote European Union demands that Israel halt its construction of settlements on occupied lands as well as other violations of human rights. The D66 resolution – adopted by a 75 percent majority – states that if Israel does not heed the demands, the EU-Israel Association Agreement "could be (partially) suspended".

The global movement supporting the Palestinian people’s right to freedom, justice and equality has taken impressive steps into the political mainstream in recent years... Israel’s current government, its most racist ever, has dropped all pretenses of “enlightenment” and “democracy.”

Academics in Italy held the country’s first scholarly discussions about boycott, divestment and sanctions measures on Israel in support of Palestinian rights — in spite of attempts at censorship during a major Middle East studies conference in Sicily.

As feminist scholars, activists, teachers, and public intellectuals we recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression. In the spirit of this perspective, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians and other Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, within Israel and in the Golan Heights, as well as the colonial displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba.

Michael HARRIS: "Scientists and BDS, in France and in the US" (AURDIP, April 13, 2016): click here!

...the absence of professional organizations representing scientists is hard to miss. The failure of the campus’s other half to engage collectively in any way with the growing movement contrasts sharply with the situation in the spring of 2002, when, in the wake of the Israeli reoccupation of the West Bank, two petitions, precursors of the BDS movement, were initiated by scientists in Britain and France and collected hundreds of signatures.

"European call: Stop the criminalisation of the BDS movement for justice in Palestine! Support grassroots human rights activists across Europe!" (European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, April 12, 2016): click here!

As Israel is increasingly unable to defend its regime of apartheid and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people and its regular massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, it is seeking supportive governments in Europe and the US to undermine free speech as a way of shielding it from criticism and measures aimed at holding it to account for its gross violations of international law.

"Amnesty International - Israeli Government must cease intimidation of human rights defenders, protect them from attacks" (AURDIP, April 12, 2016): click here!

Israeli authorities must take immediate steps to provide protection necessary for HRDs in Israel/OPT to carry out their work freely and without fear of attacks and harassment. Attacks and threats against HRDs must be investigated and those responsible must be held to account.

Nada ELIA: "As threats against BDS grow, it is time for ‘sumoud’ in activist communities" (Mondoweiss, April 11, 2016): click here!

The attacks on BDS, and BDS organizers, are intensifying globally. “The BDS organizations will have no rest,” warned Gilad Erdan at the recent “Stop BDS” conference in Occupied Jerusalem.

Dear Ms Mogherini, The participation of Mr Lars Faaborg-Andersen, head of the EU delegation to Israel, in the “Stop the Boycott” Conference in Jerusalem on 28 March has had very unfortunate consequences which you should be aware of.

Tamam Abdul, 60, sells Israeli goods in her West Bank supermarket, but she would rather not. “All of the products we receive are Israeli, unfortunately,” she said Saturday outside of Ramallah at a fifth conference about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, otherwise known by the initials BDS.

Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen, who heads the EU diplomatic mission to Israel, was responding to questions about the threats made by Israeli intelligence minister Yisrael Katz and other top officials against activists and leaders in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

A letter signed by more than 100 writers, including Junot Díaz, Richard Ford, Eileen Myles and Rachel Kushner, calls on PEN American Center to reject support from the Israeli government for its annual World Voices Festival.

In a European Parliamentary session that took place on March 1st and was sponsored jointly by S&D, EPP and ALDE MEPs, it was exposed that two Israeli arms companies have circumvented European regulations on participation in the Horizon 2020 project by introducing military research, and by including products which have been tested in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

In an address on Middle East policy last month, Bernie Sanders —the first Jewish American to win a presidential primary—did something virtually unheard of in contemporary U.S. politics when he called for an end to “what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory” by Israel.

The Edinburgh University Students’ Association passed a motion backing a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution against Israel. The nonbinding motion passed Thursday by a vote of 249 to 153, with 22 abstentions, the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported. The motion also called for an academic boycott of Israel.

During the IAW (Israeli Apartheid Week) 2016, students’ associations and groups across Italian campuses have initiated the “Studenti Contro Il Technion” campaign, embracing Michel Foucault’s claim: “Knowledge is not for knowing, it is for cutting”. However, the events organized for this occasion have been met with a clear “closure” attitude by their universities.

As was reported in the Israeli media, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said (Hebrew) at the largest Israeli anti-BDS conference, held ​on ​March 28 in Jerusalem, that Israel should engage in “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS "leaders" with the help of Israeli intelligence, intentionally using language that plays on the Hebrew term for “targeted assassinations.” My name was mentioned in this context.

The Yediot Achronot conference attacking BDS has become a veritable carnival of hate. Everyone from delusional Hollywood celebrities (Roseanne Barr) to cabinet ministers, to the leader of the Opposition have pledged fealty to the cause. Two of the speakers are under criminal investigation for corrupt political or financial dealings.

The first ever anti-BDS conference in Israel brought together politicians of all stripes to show their commitment to the fight against boycotts. In doing so, however, they showed just how effective the boycott movement really is.

“The European Union has once again abandoned its own policies that consider Israel’s settlements illegal. By failing to vote at the UN Human Rights Council for establishing a UN registry of companies implicated in Israel’s occupation regime and by joining the far-right Israeli government’s fight against BDS, the largest nonviolent Palestinian-led human rights movement, the EU is underlining its already well-known hypocrisy and declaring its disregard for human rights.”

Efforts by the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to hold Israel accountable for its serious violations of international law and to end international complicity in these violations are more widely supported and impactful than ever before.

The main objective behind BDS, an entirely non-violent movement that is championed by civil society across the globe, is not to punish ordinary Israelis, but to raise awareness of the suffering of Palestinians and to create a moral threshold that must be achieved if a just peace is ever to be realized.

As long as there is no political or diplomatic horizon, as long as the power dynamic allows Israel to dictate the terms of any negotiations, as long as the occupation seems hopelessly unending, BDS is one of the most powerful non-violent tools available for Palestinians to fight for their fundamental rights, and for enlisting allies around the world to fight alongside them.

In conclusion, whether or not one supports BDS, we commend the McGill students who voted in favour of BDS for standing up against repression in the face of increasing attempts by governments and other organisations to spread vilifying misinformation about the movement. Any statement about academic freedom in the context of Israel-Palestine must absolutely take into account that academic freedom is blatantly violated for Palestinian faculty and students every day. [o.m. ondertekend door Noam Chomsky]

The usually quiescent world of psychotherapy has been struck by a blast of anti-occupation activism, in the form of a petition signed by over 300 psychotherapists opposing the choice of The Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) to hold its annual meeting in Jerusalem this June.

In a statement sent to The Electronic Intifada, London Palestine Action said the Department for Communities and Local Government was engaging in “smoke and mirrors” and that the much-touted “boycott ban” was more of an attempt to intimidate than an actual ban.

Jonathan COOK: "﻿Emerging from a ‘reign of terror’: Palestinians in Israel hold first BDS conference" (J.C.: The View from Nazareth, March 3, 2016): click here!

Israel’s large Palestinian minority held its first-ever conference on BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – this past weekend in spite of anti-boycott legislation introduced five years ago that exposes activists in Israel to harsh financial penalties.

Over 140 psychotherapists, researchers and other mental health professionals have written an open letter to the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) to express dismay at its decision to hold its next international conference in Jerusalem.

Nora BARROWS-FRIEDMAN: "Listen: Canadian students back Israel boycott as government condemns it" (The Electronic Intifada, Feb 26, 2016): click here!

The undergraduate student union at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, passed a motion on 22 February to support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. The vote passed with a 58 percent majority.

There is only one logical and civilized way to determine the owners of the land of Palestine and that is in the United Nations and its charters as agreed upon by 194 nations. Boycotts, divestments and sanctions may be the only route to compel Israel to understand that fact.

The Israeli government played a direct role in recent policy and legislative moves in the US, UK and other countries to suppress the free speech rights of citizens calling for the boycott of Israel over its human rights abuses. Israel is now planning to significantly step up its efforts to thwart the Palestine solidarity movement, through its embassies in key capitals.

A South African conference on water has been canceled following protests against the planned participation of an Israeli diplomat... Fioramonti, a political economist, said he believed it was “necessary” to support Palestinian and Israeli activists “seeking just and sustainable peace.” Backing Palestinian calls for an academic boycott of Israel, he issued a statement announcing his withdrawal from the conference.

Eman ELSHAIKH: "The U.S. Government Is Targeting the BDS Movement" (Muftah, Feb 17, 2016)): click here!

The Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement is succeeding in many places, most recently in the form of a robust academic boycott in Italy, where over two hundred academics from dozens of Italian universities pledged to boycott Israeli academic institutions until Israel ceases its pervasive violations of international law.

The British government formally published Wednesday new guidance ostensibly intended to “stop inappropriate procurement boycotts by public authorities.” While the Conservatives have presented the document as a way of protecting Israel from the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, activists say that the measures actually fall short of a ‘ban’ on boycotts.

There is a very coordinated and well-financed campaign led by Israel and its supporters literally to criminalize political activism against Israeli occupation, based on the particular fear that the worldwide campaign of Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment, or BDS — modeled after the 1980s campaign that brought down the Israel-allied apartheid regime in South Africa — is succeeding.

Ali MILANI: "Ban or no ban, British students will continue to support BDS" (Middle East Eye, Feb 16, 2016)): click here!

Yesterday morning I - like many Palestinian and human rights activists - woke up to anger and frustration, as once again our government, a Conservative government, has come swooping to the aid of occupation and apartheid.

The call for boycott is a response to the complicity of Israel’s cultural institutions in Israel’s crimes. Israeli settler-colonialism has always included attacks on Palestinian culture, from the looting of libraries during the ethnic cleansing of 1948, through to the violent attacks by Israeli authorities on Palestinian cultural events in Occupied East Jerusalem.

It’s easy to see why some in pro-Israel circles are claiming this new law as a landmark victory in the fight for Israel. They’re wrong: just as there is no military solution to the occupation, there is no legislative one to boycotting.

Local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions are to be banned by law from boycotting “unethical” companies, as part of a controversial crackdown being announced by the Government.

For decades, Israel has failed to uphold its duties as Occupying Power and has instead deepened its occupation and regime of colonialism and apartheid. Human rights violations rising to the level of international crimes, including unlawful killings, torture, forced transfer, and other forms of collective punishment have become the norm.

In the Belgian city of Liege, organizers of an annual dance festival turned down an Israeli sponsorship of the event last week after boycott threats. Israel had initiated and offered to sponsor the festival after the Batsheva Dance troupe was chosen as an opening act. But, “at a later stage,” a cable sent from the embassy in Belgium to the Israeli ministry reads, “they informed us that they did not want to be tied to the embassy, were forgoing our support and returning the money. All of this because of the threat of a boycott. Protests made to the festival organizers failed to yield any results.”

As a global boycott movement against Israeli universities gains steam, Israeli professors say they are feeling the pressure from their colleagues overseas. Although the movement ostensibly targets universities, not individuals, Israeli academics say they are often shunned at the personal level. They experience snubs at academic conferences, struggle to get recommendations and can experience difficulty publishing their work in professional journals.

170 academics [right now, Feb 19: 312] from more than 50 Italian universities and research institutes have signed a pledge committing to a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. For the actual call: click here!

The growing delegitimization of Israel is this country's own handiwork. Should Israel decide to end apartheid, it will return to being legitimate in every respect... There's no boycott against states worse than Israel? Israel, which aspires to and can become one of the world's most enlightened countries, a light unto the nations, is not allowed to make such an argument.

The E.U., in short, is cannier, fairer, and stronger than the B.D.S. movement, though its sanctions may be misconstrued as calculated to add to the movement’s prestige. The real challenge to Israel’s economy, and sense of purpose, will not be B.D.S. but successive Likud governments that expect educated Europeans to buy into the idea that “terror” justifies what they’re doing.

"Petition in support of the right to calling for a boycott of Israeli goods in France": click here!

At first ignored, and later derided, the BDS movement has by now become one of the top strategic threats to Israel's ability carry on the business of occupation as usual.

David LLOYD: "Racism in the Defense of a Racist State: Some Reflections on BDS at the Modern Language Association" (Jadaliyya, Jan 16, 2016): click here!

It is beginning to seem as if the arrival of winter spells academic boycott season as well as the festive season. This year in November, the business meetings of two major associations voted overwhelmingly to endorse the call of Palestine civil society to engage in a boycott of Israeli academic institutions until such times as they—and the state with which they are so deeply intertwined—respect the internationally recognized human rights of Palestinians.

BDS campaign coordinator and Palestinian politician Majida al-Masri told Al-Monitor, “This campaign is unique in that it addresses housewives in their capacity as those in charge of household spending and the best suited to make decisions related to buying products. As the campaign developed, it garnered the membership of all women’s groups and organizations that are active in the West Bank, subsequently spreading to Gaza, thus empowering and driving it forward.”

Members of the American Historical Association on Saturday voted down, 111 to 51, a resolution “upholding the rights of Palestinian faculty and students to pursue their education and research freely” and committing the AHA to “monitoring Israeli actions restricting the right to education in the occupied Palestinian territories,” among other points. The vote came at the association's annual meeting here.

The United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination points out with alarm that Israel maintains two separate educational systems for its citizens — one for Jewish children and another for the children of the Palestinian minority — a structure that reinforces the profound segregation of Israeli society in everything from matters of citizenship and marriage to housing rights.

French telecoms giant Orange has announced the termination of its franchise relationship with Israeli company Partner Communications, confirming the BDS movement’s announcement last year that this was likely to happen.

Recent Israeli efforts to fight BDS smell of deep despair, which is giving rise to hopeless aggression, even worse bullying and patently irrational measures that can only help BDS to grow in the coming few years.

On December 15, 2015, the United Auto Workers (UAW) International Executive Board (IEB) nullified the resolution passed last year by members of UAW Local 2865, the 13,000 teaching assistants and student-workers at the University of California system, that called on the International to endorse the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel by withholding their financial investments in companies “complicit in severe and ongoing human rights violations as part of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people."

MLA (Modern Language Association) Members for Justice in Palestine is a group within the MLA Commons that was established in 2014 and submitted a Resolution Endorsing the Boycott of Israeli Academic institutions to the Organizing Committee of the Delegate Assembly for consideration at the 2015 Delegate Assembly meeting. The vote on the Resolution was postponed until the 2017 MLA Convention allowing for further debate and discussion of the issue with the aim of educating the membership. The organizers and supporters are scholars at all levels within the academy working in a various fields of language and literary studies. [The Open Letter can be signed online.]

Hebrew University will host a conference at the end of the month on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, a reflection of growing concerns amongst Israel’s political, cultural and academic elites about the Palestinian-led boycott.

Despite a lack of funding and solid organizational backing at home, the Palestinian diaspora in Europe has increased its activities and is winning ever stronger support, costing Israel more in economic losses and international status by the week.

In a statement, the university (Birzeit) noted that Israel’s oppressive acts against the Palestinians, especially students, reinforce the need for an international boycott, including an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

In excess of 200 scholars in South Africa on Tuesday declared their support for the boycott, adding to those of more than 600 who pledged a similar boycott in the UK in October, and a subsequent pledge by more than 120 Irish scholars.Pour la version française de la déclaration, "Engagement d’Universitaires sud-africains pour les Droits des Palestiniens", et la liste des 204 universitaires: cliquez ici!

" Israel’s violence against Palestinians is both gendered and racist. Women and children - the victims most usually decried by Western feminists - but also all adult men, both gay and straight, are oppressed by Israel. The violence takes on multiple forms, but pervades every aspect of the lives of all Palestinians. Women are targeted as the mothers, sisters or wives of present and future “terrorists”.

"The story of Hashlamon's death and the scarce media coverage it has received in the West raises some important questions: Where is the feminist outcry against such forms of violence, rooted as they are in colonial, sexualised and gendered registers of worth and worthlessness?”

"As heirs to a long tradition of scholarship on colonialism, anthropologists affirm, through this resolution, that the core problem is Israel’s maintenance of a settler colonial regime based on Jewish supremacy and Palestinian dispossession. By supporting the boycott, anthropologists are taking a stand for justice through action in solidarity with Palestinians.”

Besieged Gaza, Occupied Palestine – "We, organizations that make up the majority of the Palestinian student sector, call upon our peers and student organizations and unions around the world to mobilize against Israel’s policies of occupation, colonization and apartheid in Palestine".

James Ferguson is a giant in his field. By chance when I saw the statement below, I was reading his book on southern Africa for the third time, "The Anti-Politics Machine", a brilliant study of why foreign aid failed in the nation of Lesotho. The Stanford anthropologist has great standing among cultural anthropologists, and a superior intellect.

Ali ABUNIMAH: "France now more repressive of boycott calls than Israel" (The Electronic Intifada, November 4, 2015): click here!

On 20 October, France’s highest court of criminal appeals upheld the conviction of a dozen Palestine solidarity activists for publicly calling for the boycott of Israeli goods. The ruling by the Court of Cassation adds to growing concerns about the harsh crackdown on free speech, backed by French President François Hollande, since the murders of journalists at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in January. It also makes France, in addition to Israel, the only country to penalize appeals not to buy Israeli goods.

"Connecticut AFL-CIO Adopts Resolution in Support of BDS and Justice and Peace for the Palestinian People" (Portside.org, November 1, 2015): click here!

"As scholars associated with Irish institutions of higher education, north and south, we are deeply disturbed by Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian land, the intolerable human rights violations that it inflicts on all sections of the Palestinian people, and its apparent determination to resist any feasible settlement".

Ghuislain POISSONNIER: "According to the Court of Cassation, freedom of expression does not authorize the call to boycott Israeli products" (AURDIP, 1 novembre, 2015): click here!

"The criminal division of the Court of Cassation [France’s highest appeals court] issued a decision on October 20, 2015, affirming that freedom of expression does not authorize the call to boycott Israeli goods ; such a call is henceforward a misdemeanor in France and punishable as such".

"I am a Palestinian academic with Israeli citizenship, and I support the initiative in the AAA for a boycott resolution against Israeli institutions. Such a resolution will not harm me, nor it will harm any Palestinian academic in Israel, and it won’t harm any individual academic in Israel in general, let alone any academic from any part of the world who works on Israel/Palestine. To the contrary, I argue that such a resolution would help all academics, especially those whose work is focused on Israel/Palestine, regardless of the location where they work."

"The letter which you signed says nothing about how Israel treats the Palestinians. It doesn’t mention the siege on Gaza. It doesn’t mention the occupation, and millions of disfranchised Palestinians, living under a system of oppression. It doesn’t mention the millions of Palestinian refugees. It doesn’t mention the Palestinians being shot without trial right now, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or the protesters being shot in Gaza. It simply states that “we may not all share the same views on the policies of the Israeli government”. Rather than making common cause with those who hope for change, you made common cause with those seeking to prevent it."

Glenn GREENWALD: "Criminalization of Anti-Israel Activism Escalates, This Time in the Land of the Charlie Hebdo and “Free Speech”"(The Intercept, October 27, 2015): click here!

"The post-Charlie Hebdo “free speech” march in Paris was a fraud for multiple reasons, as I wrote at the time. It was led by dozens of world leaders, many of whom imprison or even kill people for expressing prohibited views. It was cheered by many Westerners who feign upset only when free speech abridgments are perpetrated by Muslims, but not — as is far more common — by their own governments against Muslims".

"This Commitment is motivated by deep concern for Palestinians, including Palestinian academics, struggling to sustain some semblance of normal life in intractably difficult circumstances of occupation, and denial of basic human rights. Recent events have provided, once again, grim evidence of Israeli intransigence".

More than 300 academics from dozens of British universities have pledged to boycott Israeli academic institutions in protest at what they call intolerable human rights violations against the Palestinian people. The declaration, by 343 professors and lecturers, is printed in a full-page advertisement carried in Tuesday’s Guardian, with the title: “A commitment by UK scholars to the rights of Palestinians.”

"We are lifelong Zionists. Like other progressive Jews, our support for Israel has been founded on two convictions: first, that a state was necessary to protect our people from future disaster; and second, that any Jewish state would be democratic, embracing the values of universal human rights that many took as a lesson of the Holocaust".

Omar Robert HAMILTON: "J.K.Rowling and the Prisoners of Israel"(CounterPunch, October 26, 2015): click here!

"Let us consider what the last twenty years of dialogue, mutual engagement and negotiation have brought us. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 the Israeli government has constructed 53,000 homes to house 500,000 new settler-colonists in the West Bank, has subjected Gaza to a medieval siege for over 6 years, destroyed 15,000 Palestinian homes, expelled 11,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem and divided the West Bank into 167 segregated population zones that are divided from each other by a 440km cement wall and 522 military checkpoints. It has suppressed a popular uprising and launched four major offensives that have left over 7,000 Palestinians dead."

"JK Rowling has staked out territory as a prominent face of the anti-BDS movement. She’s signed on to a heavily publicized open letter in the Guardian, “Israel needs cultural bridges, not boycotts“, encouraging “dialogue about Israel and the Palestinians” in a “wider” cultural and creative community.

Hilary AKED: "Thorns in the lawnmower: BDS can help stop Israel". "The growing BDS movement is considered by Israel as a national threat [AFP]" (The New Arab, October 21, 2015): click here!

"Israel is "mowing the lawn" again. That the Israeli military refers to its killing sprees this way gives us a sense of how routine and banal this lethal method of maintaining control has become. As Mouin Rabanni has pointed out, in this analogy the grass consists of Palestinians. While unlike the onslaughts of 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, the so-called "precision" weaponry has yet to be rolled out, Israel's killing is being practiced with the usual impunity - and is still being blamed squarely on the victims."

"At a time when Palestinians are rising up against Israeli apartheid, ranting about a trans-Atlantic trade accord might seem off-topic. Yet a protest camp held in Brussels this week illustrated how to blend a fight against corporate power and the expression of solidarity with an oppressed people".

"Whether the current phase of Israel’s intensified repression and Palestinian popular resistance will evolve into a full-fledged intifada or not, one thing is already evident—a new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up en masse against Israel’s brutal, decades-old regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid".

"The Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI) and all the undersigned student groups, representing the entire political spectrum in Gaza, are deeply troubled by a recent article titled, “The BDS Ceiling,” written by the newly formed group New York City Students for Justice in Palestine (NYC SJP). The most disconcerting aspect of this article is that, despite its veneer of leftist rhetoric, it does a great disservice to those it purports to represent and be in solidarity with".

"The BDS Ceiling"(New York City Students for Justice in Palestine, 4 October 2015): click here!

"...The term “Palestinian Civil Society” is invoked with such reverence and awe that one would be led to believe that “Civil Society” is in fact a monolith with consolidated theoretical understanding of the settler-colonial reality in Palestine, with a coherent strategy to not just petition internationals to boycott and divest, but to build power in Palestine to lead a revolutionary struggle against Zionism".

"Suleiman is on the national steering committee of Students for Justice in Palestine, which represents more than 100 local chapters across the US — a number that increases every year. “The recent news about escalation about campus repression, and Sheldon Adelson injecting all this money to fight us, is actually good news,” Suleiman said."

"The Israel lobby is redirecting resources to a new project after its failure to stop the Iran nuclear deal despite spending an estimated $30 million to halt it. Following the defeat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a campaign against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement that is spreading on American college campuses. The funding is flowing from donors closely linked to Netanyahu’s government. But the effort has almost instantly run into trouble. It is inspiring an atmosphere of incitement and intimidation, and the FBI is now investigating violent threats made against BDS activists."

"Lawyers have responded to nearly 300 incidents of “censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy for Palestinian rights” filed by Palestine solidarity activists on more than 65 US campuses in the last year and a half. Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) detail the assault in a new 124-page report, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US.”"

"Israeli citizens for boycott call on Reykjavik to stand by its decision"(Mondoweiss, September 22 2015): click here!

"We write to you as citizens of Israel who actively oppose our successive governments’ policies of belligerent occupation, colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the indigenous people of this land, the Palestinians. We write to you today to encourage you to stand by your initial and worthy decision to hold the State of Israel accountable for its consistent human rights violations, and to boycott Israeli goods."

An explanatory memorandum notes that the boycott is meant to show that the City of Reykjavík supports the right of Palestinians to independence, while condemning “the Israeli policy of apartheid” in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Ilan PAPPE: "Palestine is a global, not a Western issue"(Middle East Eye, September 9, 2015): click here!

The transparent discourse from Latin America, South Africa and South East Asia indicate the urgency to expand the Palestinian solidarity movement beyond the boundaries of the West.

Judy MALTZ: "A New Unofficial Boycott Against Israeli Academics May Be Underway. Academic told participation in conference conditioned on her denouncing the occupation"(Haaretz, September 10, 2015): click here!

Several recent cases of Israeli academics being singled out for discriminatory treatment by colleagues overseas have sparked concerns among university leaders in the country.

Palestine today is perhaps the leading international issue evoking solidarity on a global scale. Nonetheless, the “community of nations” apparently remains helpless to address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Alan HART: "UE [United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America] Becomes First National U.S. Union to Endorse BDS"(Portside, August 28, 2015): click here!

"Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) clarifies position on local campaign to cancel Matisyahu’s show at Rototom Sunsplash festival"(PACBI, August 25, 2015): click here!

"Israeli military companies, all of which are deeply involved in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people, among others, see the Olympic Games as an opportunity for profit and a means to export their “field-tested” expertise in maintaining apartheid, repression of people, and militarization of urban spaces across the globe. They must be stopped...".

"...When asked what the campaign entailed beyond the letter, they explained: “Initiating conversations about this campaign within the artworld. Cultural boycotts are a sensitive topic and there’s a lot of debate about it. It is also painful and difficult for artists to withhold participation when art is meant to build bridges. The difficult decision is made in the hopes of building peace. This letter intends to start a conversation”".

The letter can be co-signed by artists and cultural workers via email: letterforpalestine@gmail.com.

"...The cultural and academic boycott of Israel is the other central aspect of the BDS rallying cry. They are particularly important for effacing the myth — so ardently presented by fundamentalist and liberal Zionists alike — that the sphere of civil society is apolitical and in no way complicit in its state’s policies... BDS’s cultural and academic boycott insists that such structural racism should be held accountable at the level of civil society and seeks to expose the oft-heard lie that but for the activities of the state, Israeli society would be a thriving, tolerant democracy."

"The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and remains an important part of it today. As BDS picks up momentum and gathers support on university campuses across the globe, boycotting Israeli academic institutions remains very controversial and has received much criticism from a number of prominent academics."

"Israeli occupation authorities prevented Dr. Amro Issa Omar Sourani from entering the occupied Palestinian Territories to work as a lecturer in the Department of Engineering in Birzeit University. Sources in the University said Israeli authorities refused to grant Dr. Sourani, who is currently based in the United Kingdom, and his family an entry permit to the West Bank to begin his contract as a lecturer in the university even though Dr. Sourani holds a Palestinian identity card and is originally from the Gaza Strip."

Letter from Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers to the global boycott movement. "We send you this letter with appreciation for the leading role of the boycott movement, which is based on a comprehensive moral and human position that rejects injustice and oppression; confronts racism and policies of discrimination based on race, religion or sex; upholds freedom, human dignity and values of justice; and seeks to counter support and complicity with the Israeli government by international forces..."

"... Since the state of Israel continues to ignore international rights and UN resolutions; since it continues relentlessly to attack academic freedom in Palestine in all kinds of ways; since the Israeli universities are so interwoven with the actual occupation, there are no other alternatives than an international academic boycott of Israeli institutions – including academic ones. Just kilometres and miles from where Palestinians are deprived their right to education, the Israeli universities produce the knowledge on how to strengthen the occupation. For the sake of humanity please join the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel."

"Gideon Levy spent 24 hours with the former Pink Floyd singer, who has become one of the leading lights in the BDS movement. A conversation on political views, tragic family history — and when the rock star-turned-activist will be happy to play in Israel again."

"The Palestinians are poor. They are powerless. They have no voice or influence in the halls of power. They are demonized. They do not have well-heeled lobbyists doling out campaign contributions and pushing through pro-Palestinian legislation. No presidential candidate is appealing to donors—as Hillary Clinton did when she sent a letter to media mogul Haim Saban denouncing critics of Israel—by promising to advance the interests of the Palestinian people. Palestinians, like poor people of color in the United States, are expendable... The fight for the Palestinians is our fight. If the Palestinians are not liberated none of us will be liberated. We cannot pick and choose which of the oppressed are convenient or inconvenient to defend. We will stand with all of the oppressed or none of the oppressed. And when we stand with the oppressed we will be treated like the oppressed."

"...In a public letter, published in Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, Caetano Veloso wrote: “My heart is strongly against the arrogant right position of the Israeli government. I hate the occupation policy, the inhuman decisions that Israel took in what [Benjamin] Netanyahu tells us is self-defense. And I think most Israelis who are interested in our music tend to react in a similar way to the politics of his country.” Veloso also claimed that he hoped that Israelis opposed to the occupation would take heart from their performance — ignoring the existence of Israeli activists who also call for international rejection of their country’s crimes."

"Fifteen trade unions in Gaza have jointly renewed their support for the boycott of Israel and its labor institutions that are complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights... In particular, the trade unions “underline the importance of boycotting the Histadrut because of its blatant complicity in Israel’s policies including occupation, settlement building, apartheid and hijacking of Palestinian workers’ rights".

"More than 200 leading mental health professionals from around the world have signed an open letter calling for the cancellation of a European psychotherapy conference scheduled to be held in Jerusalem in August. In the letter, published in the UK newspaper The Independent, the psychologists and psychoanalysts, many from the UK, France and the United States, urge their colleagues to respect the Palestinian call for boycott and stay away from the conference should it go ahead as planned".

"The Israeli Teachers' Union has lent its support, albeit reluctantly, to a document prepared for the World Teachers' Association convention, which includes an article stating that the settlements are hindering peace and the two-state solution. A source in the Israeli union said that if it did not support this document then the Israeli education and academic system would face an international boycott".

"The Israeli government believes it is locked in an epic struggle to save Israel from the growing movement calling for an international boycott. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Israel must quickly “rebrand” itself to avoid pariah status. Ordinary Israelis are therefore being conscripted into an army of spin-doctors in a campaign termed “hasbara” – Hebrew for “public diplomacy”, or more literally “propaganda”...

"Sometimes there’s no choice but a boycott, even if that means collective punishment for all — including the people you’re seeking to help... After almost 50 years of Israeli defiance and evasion, there is little prospect of diplomatic change. The prime goal of the boycott against Israel, therefore, is to persuade the bulk of Israelis that the occupation is not in their interests. And the way to do that is by focusing their attention sharply on what those interests are and how much they have to lose. It follows that boycotting only the settlements and their commerce, as many on the Israeli left suggest, makes no sense...".

"Professor Judith Butler, one of the most prominent spokespeople of BDS, has written of non-violent protest focused on opposition to illegal forms of dispossession, enforcement and denial of human rights. BDS provides the means for non-state actors to act against the Occupation, dispossession, illegal settlement and the terrorism carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. Its purpose is to put an end to a form of civil separation based on racist principles, and to fight for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Anti-Semitism? Expressions reminiscent of what the Nazis said about the Jews? These exist only in the imagination of those who react hysterically...".

"In the occupied West Bank, almost anything can come to be seen as a threat to Israel’s security. Even cows. Yes, cows. Here’s the story: During the activism of the first Palestinian intifada, residents of the West Bank town of Beit Sahour organized boycotts of Israeli goods in an act of civil disobedience intended to pressure the government. Local activists in 1988 hatched a plan to bypass Israeli suppliers and produce milk locally. They bought 18 cows from a kibbutz...".

"Actors, authors, academics and architects have today called on the UK government to push for immediate sanctions on Israel until it abides by international law and ends its occupation of Palestinian land. They join other big names from the world of film and rock music, as well as 20,000 members of the public, who have signed a petition which will be delivered at the Houses of Parliament today".

"The Pledge: We support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality. In response to the call from Palestinian artists and cultural workers for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights".

"University heads and researchers said on Wednesday that a hidden academic boycott is being imposed on Israel at campuses abroad. Speaking at the Knesset’s Education Committee, the academics spoke of an anti-Israeli atmosphere building up on foreign campuses".

"Two recent reports suggest that Israel could face catastrophic consequences if it fails to end the mistreatment of Palestinians under its rule, whether in the occupied territories or in Israel itself... If the watching world really wants peace, economic wishful thinking will not suffice. It is past the time simply for carrots. Sticks are needed too".

"We are Jews from the United States, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land — a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish. We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed".

The Israeli government response to the "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions"(BDS) movement has been predictable. Being incapable of engaging in any reasonable form of self-criticism or even self-reflection, Israeli leaders have, instead, turned their wrath on their accusers and their victims.

As the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement grows, its co-founder, Omar Barghouti, has become a target for Israeli demonization. +972's Rami Younis sits down with Barghouti for a rare discussion about BDS's goals, its recent successes, and increasingly frequent accusations that the boycott movement constitutes anti-Semitism.

Israeli universities are passing on personal information about their students to Israel’s Shin Bet secret police. According to Haaretz, the universities give the internal intelligence agency (which is notorious for its use of torture) lists of their graduates, including identity card numbers, to use in an effort to recruit them. The revelation will likely bolster support for the international boycott of Israeli universities called for by Palestinians.

The bulk of recent incidents concerning the anti-Israel boycott, which are mainly symbolic for now, could have served as a warning sign. But a mixture of nationalistic and false statements is blinding the Israeli public and preventing a real discussion of the issue. Here are a few examples...

Israeli plans to demolish the Palestinian village of Susiya and other similar acts will not generate support for the government's campaign to stanch the growing movement to boycott settlement products and in some cases products made in Israel.

"...It’s only to be expected when facing a worldwide campaign aimed at implementing justice and international law: the stage of denial, of repression and clinging to the false, nearly magical belief that if Israel will just explain its position better and invest the appropriate resources [so-called 'hasbara'], everything will be fine. In other words, Israel continues to think that the world is dumb (and Israel is smart)...You can blame the Palestinians for everything and obscure the simple fact that this brutal occupation is Israeli. You can tell the world that it all belongs to us because the Bible says so and believe that anyone will take you seriously. You can be sure that the memory of the Holocaust will serve us forever, and justify any injustice. Of course, it won’t work indefinitely. It hasn’t worked in any country in history, no matter how strong and well-established, not even in the mightiest empires. Justice always triumphs in the end, even if very belatedly. And justice says that Israel cannot continue to tyrannize another people forever, even if Haim Saban himself lends his support."

A right-wing lawmaker plans to introduce a bill to ban foreign nationals who support boycotting Israel from visiting the country, the newspaper Haaretz reports. Yinon Magal, a member of the ultra-nationalist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, is now attempting to recruit fellow lawmakers to support his bill. If passed, the bill would ban supporters of the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) from visiting present-day Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It would also bar foreign nationals of Jewish ancestry who support boycotting Israel from obtaining Israeli citizenship.

Israeli cultural, as well as academic, institutions will always claim that the boycott infringes upon their freedom and punishes artists and academics who are the most “progressive” and opposed to “the occupation” in Israeli society. This argument, aside from being quite disingenuous, is in fact intended to deflect attention from three basic facts : first, that the boycott was called for because Israel was denying Palestinians their basic rights, including academic and cultural rights ; second, that the Palestinian academic and cultural boycott of Israel targets institutions, not individuals ; and third, that those institutions, far from being more progressive than the average in Israel, are a main pillar of the Israeli structure of colonial and apartheid oppression.

A male anchor on Israel’s Ynet news provided vivid insight into the state of Israeli freedom of speech this week with his reaction to a Jewish-Israeli guest who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement aimed at holding the state to account for its breaches of international and human rights law.

More than 40 artists and film-makers write to the Guardian to accuse cinemas of becoming ‘silent accomplices’ to the persecution of the Palestinian people... The letter says that because the festival is co-sponsored by the Israeli government via its London embassy there is a direct link between the cinemas, the screenings and Israeli government policies... The letter stresses it is not a request to refuse to show films by individual film-makers “but to reject the involvement and financial support of the Israeli state”.

"Government efforts to fight ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ are bolstering the movement and creating the political debate the campaign seeks to achieve.... A number of artists recently announced that they will cancel their performances in Israel, intensifying the sense of many Israelis that their country is becoming increasingly isolated. As the British National Union of Students this month publicly endorsed BDS, senior Israeli university officials approached the Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, warning of a growing academic boycott...".

"...Does anyone think that Israel can go on without being punished? Without being ostracized? And to tell the truth, doesn’t Israel deserve to be punished? Hasn’t the world been unbelievably tolerant so far? Orange or SodaStream, academic boycott or artistic boycott, these are light punishments. The penalties will grow worse the longer Israel avoids drawing the necessary conclusions. As opposed to attempts by Israel and the Jewish establishment to divert the discussion, at its heart is not anti-Semitism. At its heart is the occupation. That is the source of the delegitimization... ".

"First such event held by the sociology and anthropology department, and possibly the university; fact that discussion did not completely condemn BDS, and included some expressions of support, is considered unusual.

"Billionaire gambling magnate and Republican party donor convenes closed-door meeting to combat US university movement amid growing Israeli alarm over growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in US and Europe".

...Clearly, academic freedom is an inviolable principle that should be defended, but it remains an illusion for the Palestinians under occupation since 1948. The BDS does not weaken supposedly neutral and liberal spaces of critical knowledge, as its moderate detractors often argue, it rather represents the beginning of a process that aims to extend freedom to all.

"In a 19-4 vote with one abstention, the confederation of 600 student unions across the United Kingdom passed the pro-BDS proposal on Tuesday at a meeting of its National Executive Council. The motion “condemns Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza,” according to the Jewish Chronicle, and calls on students to “co-ordinate a nationwide student day of action to commemorate UN Palestine Solidarity Day” on Nov. 29. Titled "Solidarity with Palestine: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions", the motion was proposed by the School of Oriental and African Studies students union in London".

"One can object to boycotts. But sanctimonious wailing and the automatic posing as victims coated with the memory of the Holocaust won't hide the fact that Israel is ruling over an entire other nation”.

"In the end, of course, it’s quite simple. Boycotting a state for its crimes is a non-violent but potentially powerful way to express moral outrage at a time when political statements – or cowardly governments like that of Stephen Harper – fail to represent the anger of voters or have any effect on a state that ignores international law."

"The following report surveys the pressing topic of the cultural boycott of Israel, focusing specifically on contemporary visual art. Without taking sides, this document synthesizes information on the recent trend to boycott and includes summaries of notable recent incidents around the world of boycotts of contemporary art projects, some boycotting Israel while others calling attention to other causes."

"What is happening in European parliaments? In the last month and a half, the UK House of Commons, the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Irish parliaments have all recognized Israel’s eternal “right” to be a racist state via a much-touted recognition of an alleged Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas of Palestine Israel occupied in 1967".

As anthropologists and citizens of Israel, we are writing to express our thorough opposition to the letter sent to the American Anthropological Association (AAA) by the Israeli Anthropological Association (IAA) on 28 August 2014 with regard to the scheduled discussion of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) at this year’s AAA Annual Meeting. [signed by over 40 Israeli anthropologists]

In response to Elie Wiesel advertisement comparing Hamas to Nazis, 327 Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants publish New York Times ad accusing Israel of 'ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people.'

In December 2013, the American Studies Association announced that it had endorsed an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, following two years of discussion in the association and based on a majority vote by the membership in support of the boycott resolution.

"Those of us who have called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions have done so for quite straightforward reasons. We believe in academic freedom and in the intricate network of intellectual exchanges that it safeguards. We believe this, not primarily because we are concerned with the fate of the profession and its protocols, but because we believe that the academy is part of the world..."

"A standard argument against BDS – the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Israeli occupation – and especially the academic boycott- has been the “‘need to engage” with Israelis. In fact, during the 46 years of the occupation, numerous efforts to ‘engage’ have been made repeatedly, all of which are warmly embraced by Israel and its academic institutions."

"...What could possibly be wrong with dialogue, you might ask? Instead, perhaps the appropriate question might be: “is it moral to collaborate with a militarized, racist, colonial state, in order to cleanse its crimes?” Doesn’t this mean that crimes continue and newer ones are perpetrated? Indeed, evidence clearly demonstrates that continuing ‘engagements’ have not led to resolution, but instead served to numb the sensibilities of international academia to the realities of occupied Palestine. In the case of South Africa, it was clear to all academics that there was no way to ‘engage’ with apartheid by speaking to its representatives; the only way to deal with apartheid was to oppose it – to boycott, divest and apply sanctions; to deny South African institutions any support and dialogue; and to follow the advice of the ANC [African National Congress]" (letter by Haim Bresheeth and Sherna Berger Gluck).

"By choosing to avoid the Presidential Conference – an annual meeting of Israeli generals, politicians and business elites with their international fans, Prof. Hawking reminds that the occupation cannot be forgotten or avoided. A response to Haaretz’s Carlo Strenger."

Today the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people continues unabated and largely unchallenged by the United States and the European Union. Barriers to Palestinian mobility, social and political development are visible everywhere. While Jewish-Israeli citizens pass freely, more than 500 police and military checkpoints regulate Palestinian movement between the occupied West Bank and Israel. Passing through these checkpoints on a recent fact-finding tour organized by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, we witnessed Palestinians endure a daily ritual of subordination, humiliation and suspicion..

There were some remarkable admissions in a piece by the distinguished Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in the immediate wake of the British teaching union NATFHE’s vote this week to offer members moral backing if they boycott Israeli universities.

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."